A BENEVOLENT SPIRIT by Adèle Geras

There will be only one illustration in this post. There will be no names, only initials, in the manner so beloved of old-fashioned ghost story tellers.

First, a word about my own attitude to phantoms, spirits and revenants of every type. While I may not believe in them, I do think they're a wonderful resource when you're writing fiction. One of my very first books was Letters of Fire, long out of print, which was a collection of supernatural tales.



One story (and it provides the image on the cover of this edition) concerns a boy who goes on a school trip to Lancaster Castle. The memories of everything that has happened in that place through the centuries are very strong. I felt them when I visited the place myself and it was this feeling that inspired the story called 'Billy's Hand.' The castle is thick with history, which is a kind of haunting. I do firmly believe in atmospheres attaching to buildings because the past is always with us. I've felt it and I'm sure many of my readers will know precisely what I mean.

But in the whole of my 67 years I've never seen anything spooky. This in spite of having friends (one in particular, when I was at University) who routinely claimed to see figures reflected in mirrors, felt chilly on just that landing and so on and so forth.

One night, though, about half a dozen years ago, I travelled to a picturesque part of the country and spent a night as a guest of...let's call her L. Her house is beautiful and also extremely old. In the hall, there's a window and on one of the panes, a name appears. It's been scratched on the glass, maybe by a diamond, in (L thinks) the 18th century. The whole name is there but let us call her - for it is a woman - Mrs W.

When L showed me to my room, she mentioned Mrs W and assured me that she was a most benevolent phantom. All she did, it seemed, was tuck sleepers up in the bed, in the very bedroom I was to sleep in. The room was blissfully comfortable. I was tired. I'd had a glass of wine and some food with L. I didn't feel in the least spooked. Nevertheless, when I turned the light out, I decided that it was better to be safe than sorry. So I said, aloud: "If you're there, please tuck me in very gently because I'm really tired and want to go straight to sleep."

This would be a much better story if I had been tormented all night long. As it was, I slept like a log and Mrs W either tucked me in so gently that I didn't feel it, or else decided to be peaceful on that particular night.

Before writing this post, I checked with L. I phoned her to see if she could shed any light on Mrs W and her activities. We spoke for about ten minutes and L produced more and more evidence to show that Mrs W was indeed a presence in that beautiful house. Mostly, it seems, she confines herself to bedrooms. She rearranges furniture. People feel as though she's there in the bedroom with them. Some do indeed get the tucking-up treatment. There's a part of the house which isn't a bedroom, but a passage on the way to the bathroom that some members of the extended family like to avoid when they visit. L was adamant that her mother, a very sensible and sceptical woman in every way, had felt the presence of Mrs. W as had L's children and L. herself. I hasten to add that L. is as sensible and practical and intelligent a person as you could wish to meet. She told me that one friend of hers, a man she described as a 'sensitive' had actually seen Mrs W going up the stairs to the bedroom...he was standing in the hall at the time and had read her name on the glass just a moment or two before...

I hadn't been haunted but Mrs W is still with me. I like to think of why she's in bedrooms tucking people in....that could be the beginning of a story.

I wanted to be a warrior princess... Katherine Roberts

Lucy Lawless as Xena from the TV series Xena Warrior Princess  

You know how some authors always seem to be writing the same story? I don’t mean sticking with a single book or series, though this happens. But often we might use different characters, plots, settings, experiment with different genres and age groups, or even write to someone else’s brief, and yet the same THING always fights its way out of the pages. Cleverly published, an author’s THING becomes their "brand”, but it can take some time to find.

All of the authors on this blog are "history girls", of course. Yet history is a very wide ranging genre, especially when you venture into legend and myth, and although I've written books with historical backgrounds, I don't think "history girl" really describes me. (Mary will probably throw me off this blog now!) All my work has an element of magic, which puts me firmly on the legend and myth side of history, and I write for young readers so story is always more important than hard fact. But I never thought I had a THING until I got as far as formatting my latest Seven Fabulous Wonders title The Amazon Temple Quest as an ebook and realised that warrior princesses keep fighting their way into my pages in true Xena style.

In The Amazon Temple Quest, my warrior princess is called Lysippe. She is the youngest of her tribe, last of the legendary Amazon warrior race, on their way to join King Philip of Macedon’s army for his coming Persian campaign. They are also on a quest (hence the title) for one of the lost “gryphon stones” of their people, which ward off death. Before they reach Macedonia, however, Lysippe and her sister Tanais are captured by slavers. Tanais is badly wounded, leaving Lysippe to lead a daring escape attempt during which the runaways seek sanctuary in the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

model of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, Turkey.

Needless to say, Lysippe and Tanais are not your typical fairytale princesses with jewels in their hair, batting their eyelashes at handsome princes. They owe a fair amount to Xena, since their tribe lives without men. I located their home on the Scythian steppe, after reading about a grave discovered in Kazakhstan containing the bones of an unusually tall warrior queen buried with weapons. They wear leather leggings, carry half-moon shields, ride horses, and are armed with bows and arrows. But in keeping with the myth element of my Seven Fabulous Wonders series, the amazons in my book also have magical powers.

Seven are the signs of a true Amazon:

the yellow glare,

the sleep that heals,

a fighting spirit,

a blinding shield,

birth without man,

death without pain,

and the power to command a gryphon’s flame.

Yet they are vulnerable too, since despite being warriors they are not as physically strong as men. Here Lysippe has ridden out alone after arguing with her sister, and has just been captured by the slavers, who mistake her for a village girl…

She took deep breaths as her captor crouched before her and removed his helmet. He had pale silver hair and grime on his cheeks where dust had built up under the bronze. A jagged scar split his forehead above his left eye. Most unsettling of all, he had no eyebrows or eyelashes so there was nothing to soften that cold, blue glare. Lysippe made herself meet his gaze, though she still felt queasy from the pain in her ankle, and the bruises she’d suffered in her fall were beginning to hurt.
    He fingered the worn leather of her leggings. “Where are you from, slave? Where did you steal that horse?”
    “I’m an Amazon!” Lysippe said, trying to sound braver than she felt. She peered past him to see what had happened to Tanais. “Northwind’s mine – I didn’t steal him. And my mother and all her warriors are on their way back, so you’d better let me go!”
    The men who had stayed behind laughed.
    “Don’t lie to me, slave!” her captor growled. “Everyone knows Amazons are extinct.”
   
I've sneaked warrior princesses into other stories, including a short tale about Queen Boudicca's daughters that got shortlisted for the Library of Avalon Geoffrey Ashe Prize, and you might have noticed the Amazon queen made a brief appearance in "I am the Great Horse", my story of Alexander the Great from the horse's mouth (now sadly out of print in the UK).

Ten years later, and a slightly younger warrior princess has inspired a series of her own... King Arthur's daughter Rhianna Pendragon, whose first book Sword of Light comes out in February 2012 from children's publisher Templar for readers aged 9+. I'm quite excited about this, because for the first time my warrior princess has fought her way on to the cover. And although we are being careful not to make the book appear too girly in case boys are put off by that, Rhianna is very much the heroine.

(cover mock-up subject to changes in colour and finish)



You'll be hearing much more about Rhianna Pendragon next year, since Book 2 is due out at the end of 2012 and I am currently writing Book 3 in the series, but I hope you don't mind me giving you this little pre-Xmas taster to prove that you don't have to own a Kindle to read my work! I know you must be beginning to wonder... but this is not the place for lengthy explanations of why authors "go dark", so I'll save that for another day.

While inhabiting very different books and stories, all these warrior princesses have something in common. They are strong and brave, they ride horses and brandish swords and take on the men at their own game. They do not expect a handsome prince to fight their battles for them (although they wouldn’t say no if a prince happened along... with the possible exception of Xena, of course!). Yet they are not just sexier versions of kick-ass male warriors, as so many heroines written by male authors tend to be. My warrior princesses seek spiritual fulfillment as well as power and glory, which is an important element of my own writing as I swing my pen - or keyboard - instead of an imaginary sword.

The truth is I wanted to be Xena when I grew up… does that count as an author THING?

The Amazon Temple Quest ebook is now available at the promotional price of 99p until Dec 31st.

You can preorder Rhianna Pendragon's first adventure "Sword of Light" here (or, better still, wait until it comes to your local bookshop since this one will be a REAL BOOK - and a very beautiful one, too!)

More details on my website http://www.katherineroberts.co.uk/
Follow my unicorn on Twitter @reclusivemuse

Lost generation: N M Browne

I am of a strange generation, straddling two worlds. My grandmother, born in 1914 was ninety seven last week, her mother, who died when I was sixteen, was born at the end of the nineteenth century. I have had a direct link with the age that precedes the welfare state, the age of the horse drawn carriage, oil lamps and tin baths, domestic service, back street abortions and the fear of the workhouse. The link carries through two world wars,the creation of the NHS, the wireless, the radiogram, to the age of the pill, the radio, the tv the internet and the mobile phone. I remember when wash day took all day - my grandmother had a dolly and a mangle. She would boil, and blue and starch whites, then would dry and air, and iron and that too would take a whole day. I casually 'put a wash on' most days, use an ecology destroying tumble dryer and am a stranger to the iron.
Am I of the first generation to know less than my children? I first used a computer in 1985, used an early version of the internet in ’87. Even so I am an ignorant visitor to the digital age, irritating my children with my idiosyncratic approach, my inefficiency and impatience with instructions.
Our society has reached a degree of complexity that many of us don’t understand how it works. Indeed I don't even know how much I don't know, just how much a problem in an oil well in the Middle East directly impacts my ability to buy coffee in Richmond. One slight blip with the National Grid and we cannot cook or wash, or do our jobs. The failure of any one part of the system could paralyse the whole and as someone or other said we are never more than three meals from riot.
The point of this ramble is this: complex societies when they fail, fail fast and in the past they have failed often. I like to write about such times, moments which straddle the rise and fall of one culture or another: the departure of the legions from Britain, the coming of the Angles; the moments when chaos descends. Fruitful as they are for stories however I’m not sure I want to live in such times and we may just be on the brink.
There is a well known article by Brian Ward- Perkins which suggests that once Rome with all its administration and advanced technological specialisation left these shores, the economy slumped to below its pre Roman level and took three hundred years to recover. According to Professor Ian Morris of Stanford until around 1700 societies have tended to reach a degree of complexity and then spectacularly imploded. The West has far exceeded that ceiling, have we finally reached a new one? Will my generation straddle a third world, that of the decline and fall of Europe? Tin bath anybody?

'A Fashionable Book' by Katherine Langrish

On 26^th December 1662, twenty-nine year old Samuel Pepys met his friend Mr Battersby, who recommended ‘a new book of Drollery in verse called Hudibras.’  

Eager to keep up with the newest things, Pepys promptly went out and bought the first volume for the considerable sum of two shillings and sixpence.  But he was disappointed.  ‘When I came to read it, it is so silly an abuse of the Presbyter-Knight going to the wars, that I am ashamed of it; and by and by meeting at Mr Townsend’s at dinner, I sold it to him for 18d’.  (And that was a loss of a whole shilling!)

HUDIBRAS is a mock epic by Samuel Butler which makes satirical fun of the Puritans and Presbyterians who had so lately held power in England.  It tells the story of Sir Hudibras, a stupid and arrogant knight errant on whom the poet lavishes absurd amounts of praise.  The book was a huge success, with pirated copies and spurious continuations springing up even before the author could bring out the second and third parts.  With Pepys, however, it completely misfired.  He failed to see what was so funny about it.  

By February 1663, though, poor Pepys was having second thoughts and rather regretted his decision.  Since everyone praised the book so highly, perhaps he had been too hasty in getting rid of it?  Off he went: ‘To a bookseller’s on the Strand and bought Hudibras again, it being certainly some ill humour to be so set against that which all the world cries up to be an example of wit – for which I am resolved once again to read him and see whether I can find it out or no.’

Perhaps buying the book for a second time made him determined to persist, but it didn’t make the task of wading through it any less of a chore.  And now he became more cautious.  Nine months later, on 28 November, he walked through St Paul’s Churchyard, famous for its bookstalls, ‘and there looked upon the second part of Hudibras; which I buy not, but borrow to read, to see if it be as good as the first, which the world cries so mightily up, though I have tried by twice or three times reading to bring myself to think it witty…’

But borrowing it made no difference, either to his opinion of the book, or to his obvious desire that – somehow – he might learn to like what everyone else liked.   

For, on December 10^th, having decided to spend the immense sum of three pounds upon books, he went back to the booksellers, ‘and found myself at a great loss what to choose.’  His real temptation was to buy plays, but he could never quite rid himself of the feeling that plays were somehow rather sinful, so at last… ‘I chose Dr Fuller’s Worthys, the Cabbala or collection of Letters of State – and a little book, Delices de Hollande, with another little book or two, all of good use or serious pleasure, and Hudibras, both parts, the book now in greatest Fashion for drollery, though I cannot, I confess, see enough where the wit lies.’

By now, Pepys has bought Hudibras three times – even though he simply cannot get on with it.  This goes to show how success breeds success, of course.  Hands up who bought the last Dan Brown just to find out what all the fuss was about? 

It would be nice to record that Pepys finally managed to enjoy his purchase, but I fear he never did.  At any rate, the last reference he makes to Hudibras is in his diary entry for January 27^th, 1664.  ‘At noon to the Coffee-house, where I sat with Sir William Petty, who is methinks one of the most rational men that I ever heard speak, having all his notions the most distinct and clear; among other things saying that in all his life these three books were the most esteemed and generally cried up for wit in the world – Religio Medici, Osbourne’s Advice to a Son, and Hudibras.’

And there we are left.  Pepys makes no further comment – but can’t you just sense him scratching his head…?

Images:

Portrait of Samuel Pepys by J. Hayls, 1666,   National Portrait Gallery

'Hudibras' courtesy of James Smith Noel Collection

Welcome to Dystopia – Population Increasing (by Eve Edwards)

Earlier this year, I had a catch-up chat with one of my editors after the Bologna Book Fair.

‘So what’s the big news in young adult fiction? Fallen angels? Zombies? Demigods?’ I asked.

‘Oh no, they think the fashion for paranormal romance is passing; it’s all dystopia now.’

I have to admit my heart plummeted. Just what we all need in grim economic conditions with youth unemployment at record levels: a generation raised on gloom. I suppose you could argue that reading The Hunger Games makes you realize it isn’t all so bad; you may have to queue at the Job Centre when you leave school but at least you don’t have to slaughter the people around you to stand a chance of surviving. Yet I find myself shying away from a diet of brutality and depressing post-apocalyptic societies. What’s happened to hope for humanity?

My editor’s observation did lead me to think about the history of dystopia in literature. The expression of the theme that came to mind first was a childhood memory of watching the film of Logan’s Run which was based on a novel of 1967 by Nolan and Johnson. That society solved the problem of rationed resources by killing people at the age of 21 (the film raises the age to 30). You can see why it stuck in my mind as a teenager – it made you feel like one of the ten pence pieces in a coin waterfall safely out of the drop zone but knowing every push of the year would take you nearer the edge....

The roots of dystopia in literature go much further back – Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave New World, Erewhon, some of the societies in Gulliver’s Travels – I’m sure we could think of many more. If the Twilight/paranormal romance phase was a flourish from that old literary tradition of the gothic; young adult fiction look set to relive another in the return to dystopia. Perhaps it is a necessary medicine. Dystopia is usually intended as a powerful critique of our contemporary society and is often written to warn us of where we might be heading. My problem is that I just don’t like it. I’ll read it but I don’t enjoy it.

Heading to Alcatraz -
Image of the future for generation Z?

There I’ve confessed. Phew. I’m probably guilty of all sorts of intellectual sins preferring to be cheered up by what I read. I take comfort from the fact that a bias towards optimism is proven to better for us individually. The BBC reported in October a study in Nature Neuroscience that 80% of us tend to a positive outlook. This is bad news as it makes us underestimate risk (our marriage won’t fail, I won’t be the one to get cancer if I smoke) but it has the undeniable advantage of making us statistically healthier and live longer. ‘A study on nearly 100,000 women showed a lower risk of heart disease and lower death rate in optimists.’  Reasons to be cheerful indeed!


There is also something in the argument that there is a danger of society at large entering a gloom spiral if it gets too negative about its prospects. It may be that the only way out of our economic bind is a good dose of optimism. I was impressed by the comments on the recession by the entrepreneur, Sir David Tang, made a few years ago, particularly because he has been proved right over the interim. ‘Pessimism has an uncanny knack of being self-fulfilling.’  He goes on to say: ‘It is only with a sense of optimism, preferably accompanied by a sense of energy and laughter, that we will be able to pick ourselves up from a broken Humpty Dumpty.’

Now, don’t get me wrong: I’m not suggesting dystopian literature had anything for which it should apologize. It has brought us some incredible storytelling and the occasional masterpiece. But with the way that bookselling seems to lurch heavily in one direction once it senses a trend, I just hope that space will also be given over the next few years in Young Adult fiction to voices offering a more optimistic view of human life. I think they might be needed if poor old Humpty is to stand a chance.

You can find me on www.eve-edwards.co.uk

A Trip to the Sir John Soane’s Museum

by Linda Buckley-Archer

In last Saturday’s post Dianne Hofmeyr described how a dozen or so History Girls met up to push our primarily ‘virtual’ relationships into the real world. And what a lovely day we had. Do take a look at Dianne’s photographs if you haven’t viewed them already.

Our excuse was a group visit to the home of architect Sir John Soane – which has been preserved and renovated to appear as it would have done at the time of his death – and it is my personal take on the museum which is the subject of today’s post.

Ten years ago I told a friend that I was starting work on a children’s novel set in eighteenth-century London. She immediately said: I will take you to the Sir John Soane’s Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields – you will LOVE it. So she did, and I did, and I have done ever since. In fact, the dates didn’t quite fit in with my fictional narrative but Lincoln’s Inn Fields itself became a setting which I returned to in all three volumes of The Gideon Trilogy. When I subsequently found both a literary agent and a publisher within minutes walk of the museum, visits to the S.J.S.M. became a regular event and it won a firm place in my subjective London atlas. As a novelist rather than an historian, it is less the detail (and heaven knows there’s enough detail here to satisfy anyone) than the spirit of the place that keeps drawing me back. It is a unique space, a London gem, a step back into the home and mind of a great English architect and inveterate collector of artefacts.

As far as I am concerned, London is a never-ending source of wormholes to the past: to walk this city’s streets is to be part of an historical continuum that in varying degrees fascinates, illuminates, humbles and occasionally disappoints (though, as that great biographer of the capital, Peter Ackroyd, asserts, London always survives). So, in the midst of such riches, why should you divert from your path in order to visit the Sir John Soane’s Museum? In no particular order, here are some of the reasons why I suggest that you should: its perfect situation, on the north side of Lincoln’s Inn Fields; the iconic yellow drawing room with its delightful views over the square; the astonishing folding Picture Room (Soane’s ingenious solution to running out of space for his paintings was to insert some extra ‘walls’ and put them on hinges); Soane’s collection of Hogarths (The Rake’s Progress and The Election) and his Canalettos (views of Venice); the Crypt crammed with treasures from the ancient world; Soane’s use of glass, of convex mirrors, and his opening up of dark spaces in order to create effects with light; the juxtaposition of the domestic with the astonishing, cluttered legacy of one of the world’s great collectors of artefacts, ancient and modern. The house is such a tardis: so packed with fascinating objects you always leave vowing to come back, yet it is small enough for you to appreciate properly in one visit. Here is a link to the museum’s website which will give you a taste of the delights contained within its walls – although is absolutely no substitute for going there in person:

http://www.soane.org/

Photograph of Lincoln's Inn Fields by Stephen Craven for the Geograph project.

Lincoln’s Inn Fields has to be one of the loveliest green spaces in London. The square is, to use a hackneyed but in this case appropriate term, a small oasis situated between busy Kingsway, Holborn, Chancery Lane and Lincoln’s Inn itself. But you don’t have to be a lawyer to eat your lunch under a giant plane tree and admire the architecture. First developed in the seventeenth century, it used to boast a theatre (demolished in the mid-nineteenth century) and has long been home to the comfortable professional classes, particularly, of course, the legal profession. The pitiless lawyer, Mr Tulkinghorn, of Charles Dickens’s Bleak House, had his offices in Lincoln’s Inn Fields and the brass plates of law firms still abound. On the south of the square, opposite the Sir John Soane’s Museum, you can see evidence of another gentlemanly profession: the headquarters of the Royal College of Surgeons. This fine edifice also incorporates the Hunterian Museum (a museum of surgery) which certainly deserves another post all to itself.

This benign and kindly face belongs to Sir John Soane (1753-1837). Apprenticed to the architect George Dance, he studied architecture at the Royal Academy and won a travelling scholarship that allowed him to spend two years in Italy which engendered his lifelong appetite for collecting all things classical. His commissions included the Bank of England, the Dulwich Picture Gallery and the Holy Trinity Church at Marylebone. Over the course of his lifetime he acquired and rebuilt three adjacent houses, 12,13 and 14 (in 1792, 1813 and 1823 respectively), and constantly reworked his home and reconceived his displays of artefacts. Before his death he established his home as a museum by Act of Parliament. As Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy, he used his displays to teach and test his pupils’ knowledge of classical art and design.

Aside from the extensive collections which Sir John Soane amassed (Greek, Roman and Egyptian antiquities, terracotta and bronze artefacts, reliefs, stucco fragments, sculpture, death masks, paintings, sketch books, etc, etc, etc – pity the poor archivist), the museum gives a wonderful insight into domestic life at Lincoln’s Inn Fields in the early nineteenth century. Susan Palmer, of the museum, has written an excellent account of this in her book: The Soanes at Home (a volume to which I have turned in my research and would highly recommend). Drawing on and reproducing original documentation from the museum archives, it is a wonderful source for understanding just how a house was run at this period: the servants, the plumbing, the heating, the cooking, the laundry, mealtimes, the delivery of coal and milk, and so on. (Incidentally, for younger visitors, Fanny, Mrs Soane’s dog, gives a charmingly illustrated account of life at numbers 12 and 13 Lincoln’s Inn Fields in her book, The Journal of Mrs Soane’s Dog Fanny, by Herself, written by Mirabel Cecil and illustrated by Francesca Martin. Both books are available from the museum.)

Scaffolding currently envelops Sir John Soane’s home and this is because the museum is undertaking a major project – due to be completed in 2014 – which will restore the entire 2nd floor of no. 13. Visitors will be able to view Soane’s private apartments: bedroom, bathroom, oratory, Mrs Soane’s morning room and her husband’s architectural models room. These exciting renovations will cost £7M. £6.5M has already been raised. If anyone would like to help with the remaining £0.5M, follow the link:

http://www.soane.org/opening_up_the_soane/donate_to_outs/

You can visit the museum in the evening, by candlelight, on the first Tuesday of the month, and, for a princely sum, you can also hire the museum for events. I must admit that my ultimate venue for a book launch has long been Sir John Soane’s dining room and library by candlelight. Future publishers kindly take note...

Leonardo, Cecilia and that "ermine"

Now that the hugely successful Leonardo exhibition at the National Gallery in London has sold out, it seems as if everyone has suddenly discovered this portrait. It adorns the front of the catalogues and graces thousands of carrier bags and leaflets.

On the day I went, less than a week after the exhibition opened, there was not a single postcard of it to be had. It seems the National Gallery had seriously underestimated the appeal of sixteen-year-old Cecilia Gallerani - if that is indeed who the sitter is.

It is frankly a bit annoying, like when everyone discovers the band or restaurant or city that you thought was a special find of yours and it's no longer your secret. I have known and loved this portrait for half a century; it has always been my favourite of Leonardo's paintings and now everyone else loves it too!

Still, it was very special thrill to be in the same room as Cecilia at last and she certainly lived up to expectations, although the painting is quite small (54.8 x 40.3cm) and was displayed behind glass. This picture was so famous that Bernardo Bellincioni wrote a poem about it not long after it was painted: "Cecilia, today so very beautiful, is she/whose lovely eyes make the sun seem dark shadow."  Funny he didn't mention that she is holding something like a ferret.

Leonardo had wriiten about ermines in his early period at the Milanese court: "the ermine out of moderation never eats but once a day; it will rather let itself be taken by the hunters than take refuge in a dirty lair, in order not to stain its purity."

Moderation and purity are odd virtues to associate with a teenage mistress yet this is what Cecilia Gallerani was: Ludovico Sforza's mistress, he who was Leonardo's master in Milan. She was a middle class girl, educated, with six brothers who took precedence over her and she lost her father when she was seven years old. It is highly likely that her liaison with Sforza began before she was quite fourteen but girls could marry at twelve or thirteen in the late fifteenth century. Indeed Cecilia was betrothed already to member of the Visconti family and had been since childhood - a betrothal that Ludovico dissolved.

But Ludovico Sforza was also a member of the Oder of the Ermine, a prestigious honour bestowed on him by the King of Naples in 1488. So in a sense, young Cecilia is caressing her lover.

In 1491 when Cecilia was still only eighteen and Ludovico had married Beatrice d'Este, she, the "lady with an ermine"  bore him a son. A few years later she was married to a Count, but hung on to the portrait until the imperious Isabella d'Este, Beatrice's sister, required it of her. She died in 1536, in her early sixties, a remarkable instance of survival.

That ermine is a northern variety of stoat, Mustela rminea, which would have had a white pelt in winter. Varnish has discoloured this to a brownish-grey. But it doesn't seem to have much fur at all! I had often wondered about this animal.

Mustela erminea

The exhibition makes all clear. In the same room as Cecilia are drawings Leonardo made - of a dog's feet, a bear's muzzle - that make it seem as if the animal might be a composite - a sort of fantasy ermine. Cecilia probably didn't have a pet mustelid after all. You can imagine the painter giving her a cushion and saying "pretend it's an ermine, if you would, my Lady."

And yet, and yet, look at her hands and the animal's paws. He is claiming her as she does him; I can't quite give up the idea that Leonardo painted them from life, even though the symbolism is everything.

More than Lisa Gherardini whose portrait known as Mona Lisa the painter kept with him till his death, more than Ginevra Benci or La Belle Ferronière (this last also in the National Gallery exhibition, the teenage Cecilia captivates and enchants the viewer, looking away to her left at something or someone out of the frame, as does the creature she hold so lightly and so securely. Maybe it was Ludovico himself, come to see what the Florentine was making of his young mistress. He can't have been disappointed.

Note: this information can be found in Massimiliano Capati Leonardo: a life through paintings (Mandragora 2009); Charles Nicholl Leonardo da Vinci: The Flights of his Mind (Allen Lane 2004) and Luke Syson with Larry Keith Leonardo: Painter at the Court of Milan (National Gallery 2011)